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World Water Day Photos: Water-Savvy Cities

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A worker walks through a pipe at a construction site near Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Water Works’ Nagasawa Water Purification Plant.

A nuclear emergency in earthquake and tsunami-struck Japan is shining a light on the importance of water in fueling the planet: Nuclear production takes copious amounts of H2O. But before the crisis, Japan was making huge strides in water filtration technology and water supply and sewage management systems built to withstand earthquakes.

The Bureau of Waterworks serves nearly 12 million people in Tokyo, and, according to the Clinton Foundation, it has nearly halved the amount of water lost to leaking pipes in the past decade—from 39.6 billion gallons (150 million cubic meters) a year to 17.9 billion gallons (68 million cubic meters) a year. That’s about enough to supply Tokyo with water for 14 days and New York City for 15 days.

Tokyo’s water managers have made an intensive effort to replace or repair pipes as soon as a leak is detected. Aging pipes are often replaced with more earthquake-resistant magnesium-reinforced cast iron. And a highly evolved computerized detection system monitors the city’s water supply 24 hours a day.

This year’s annual World Water Day, sponsored by the United Nations (UN), is dedicated to discussion about “Water for Cities” and the challenges of providing an increasing urban population, especially in the developing world, with adequate water and sanitation services.

With more than half the world’s populations in urban areas, many flocking there just recently, water supply often presents huge obstacles. One of every four city residents worldwide, or 789 million people, live without the type of clean and safe sanitation services sometimes taken for granted in the developed world. And, according to the UN, 27 percent of people living in cities do not have water piped into their homes, meaning they are often finding water through illegal, unregulated, and polluted sources.

--Tasha Eichenseher

Photograph by Tomohiro Ohsumi, Bloomberg/Getty Images

Las Vegas, Nevada

Another form of water efficiency is taking place across the Pacific Ocean in Nevada’s sin city. Dealing with impending drought, the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) continues to promote innovative water conservation measures as part of the solution.

It isn’t the hotels and fountains on the strip that consume the most water, it is, in part, the city’s lush green lawns and golf courses that need constant irrigation in this desert environment that can suck up gross amounts of H2O.

Recognizing the large water footprints of irrigation, SNWA pays residents of arid Las Vegas to tear up their thirsty turf grass ($1.50 a square foot). According to the Water Authority website, their Water Smart Landscape rebate program has helped to convert more than 150 million square feet (14 million square meters) of lawn to water-efficient and native desert landscaping, “saving the community billions of gallons of water.”

Government officials have issued a draft water allocation plan that considers urban, agricultural, and environmental supplies to save cities, farms, rivers, and wetlands. The plan calls for cutting average water allocations to farmers and other water users by 22-29 percent.

Colorful huts line Brighton Beach in Melbourne, a city that has been commended for its water conservation efforts. Melbourne Water, the agency responsible for setting water use restrictions, has a multi-pronged plan in place that includes permanent water saving rules and extensive use of recycled water.

A New York worker takes a break in City Water Tunnel No. 3. New York City lays claim to some of the cleanest and best drinking water in the country. This is due, in part, to an elaborate land management strategy that tries to keep the city’s supply free of contaminants by buffering it from farmland and other pollution sources upstate.

And now conservation will be easier as the city’s thousands of miles of pipe will be monitored with wireless leak detection systems that report losses in real time.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the system will help residents save money. “Weeks or months of undetected leaks can result in hundreds or even thousands of dollars, basically, if you pardon the pun, going down the drain for homeowners,” Bloomberg told local media outlet NY1.

Photograph by Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Tianjin, China

Huanxiu Lake in Tianjin municipality, China, is expanded at the expense of a village. Tianjin has suffered from serious water shortages and ill-planned lake-side tourism efforts in the past, but is now the site of one of China’s eco-city projects. These ambitious urban planning schemes, which aim to be city-scale demonstration projects for cutting-edge energy and water technologies and showcase futuristic environmentally friendly features, such as “solarscapes,” are sometimes more hype than healthy living, says the University of Southern Florida’s Vairavamoorthy, who spends much of his time conceptualizing cities of the future.

“China has a lot of eco-cities . . . you have to be careful, some of them are trophy cities. They want to have the latest recycling technology, but will they be sustainable,” asks Vairavamoorthy.

He has heard good things, however, about the Sino Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, 90 miles (150 kilometers) southeast of Beijing. In an effort to become a sustainable city by 2020, the Singapore-supported Tianjin eco-city will rely heavily on recycled wastewater and desalination to overcome shortages and provide household water to its estimated 350,000 residents.

Photograph from China Photos/Getty Images

Singapore

Singapore has become the poster child for urban water efficiency and innovative water recycling technologies, drawing investment dollars and talent from major corporations such as Siemens and GE, which are hoping to expand their water-recycling businesses in the growing cities of Asia. Singapore itself is investing $240 million over five years in water technology research.

The city-state’s national water agency, PUB, employs a strategy it calls Singapore’s Four National Taps to ensure an adequate supply of water for its five million residents and the economy, with the end goal of total water self-sufficiency.

The first tap is rain and river water from 17 local reservoirs, the second is water it imports from northern neighbor Malaysia. Tap three is “NEWater” or high-grade recycled water processed with cutting-edge ultra-filtration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet radiation technologies, and the fourth tap is desalinated ocean water.

Since the 1960s, Singapore has worked to reduce its reliance on imported water from Malaysia. With the opening of a fifth recycling plant last year, the country is able to produce NEWater to meet up to 30 percent of its current water demand.

Michael Toh, managing director of Singapore International Water Week, explains that Singapore’s vision is to integrate water resource management with urban development. “Our solution needs to be holistic and sustainable,” he adds. The long-term goal, Toh says, “is to capture every drop of water that falls on the island, to recycle and reuse every drop.”

In an effort to bring people closer to water, Singapore is transforming canals and drains into rivers and canal-side parks and water playgrounds. “We want people to come closer to and bond with the water,” Toh says. “It’s not just about producing a lot of water, we also need to manage demand, to make sure people don’t waste water. The idea is simple: if you own something you will take care of it.”

Photograph by Munshi Ahmed, Bloomberg/Getty Images

Kampala, Uganda

“There are some cities that have made a lot of strides but they’re not sexy, not all glass buildings and modern,” says the University of Southern Florida’s Vairavamoorthy.

Kampala, Uganda, would be one of those places, where many slum dwellers still lack secure connections to water and rely on distribution points like the one pictured above.

The city’s private water and sewer agency went bankrupt in the 1990s. Then the renationalized agency, the National Water and Sewerage Corporation fell under the leadership of a charismatic managing director—William Muhairwe. “He turned the whole thing around,” Vairavamoorthy explains. Muhairwe cracked down on leakage and companies that weren’t paying for all of the water they used. He started to install water meters and launched an aggressive campaign to track how water was being used.

The new revenue coming into the system has allowed the city to install more connections and improve service to the poor. “A lot of the [water] problems in the developing world are about financial sustainability; they don’t have revenue to operate and maintain the system,” Vairavamoorthy adds.

The residents of Hammarby, a region of southern Stockholm, have been living the eco-city dream.

The planned environmental community is built on a nearly 1-square-mile (2-square-kilometer) brownfield that was part of the development surrounding Sweden’s bid for the 2004 Olympics. The plans call for 9,000 homes and 10,000 jobs by 2015.

It has become a model city for carbon neutrality and has a water theme—wastewater processing is used to create biogas in a closed-loop energy and water system.

Photograph by Johan Furusjo, Alamy

Seattle, Washington

Seattle could become the stateside Hammarby. Future cities expert Vairavamoorthy and others have described Seattle as a water policy and technology incubator.

For decades Seattle Public Utilities has been modeling its water system 50 to 60 years out into the future to try to understand the impact of population growth and climate change on the city’s ability to deliver water to residents, industry, other regional water supply systems, and aquatic species, including salmon, explains Ron Rochon, a partner at Seattle-based architecture firm the Miller Hull Partnership and a former member of the utilities’ advisory council.

“The utility is a recognized leader in water conservation strategies, and is a model not only for other water systems nationally, but globally,” says Rochon. They have steadily reduced demand while population in the Puget Sound region has increased, to the point where total consumption has been steady for years, and there is no foreseeable need to develop new water sources before 2050, he adds.

The Utilities are also a leader in innovation, particularly regarding stormwater management and wastewater treatment, Rochon says.

Miller Hull is working on the city’s, and one of the country’s, first living office and commercial buildings. The Cascadia Center for Design & Construction will send reclaimed wastewater back into the ground surrounding the building and try to emulate the predevelopment hydrology of the site.

The Bullitt Foundation, which supports sustainable design, will have its offices in the Cascadia Center. According to Bullitt’s website, the building aims to acheive the goals of the Living Building Challenge, which calls for 100 percent on-site renewable energy generation and 100 percent of the building’s water needs provided by rainwater harvesting.

If the pilot project goes well, this innovative approach could be used by other commercial buildings in the city.